


Five Sixteen: McHanzo

by ChaoticFayth



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Minor Injuries, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 16:37:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10925775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticFayth/pseuds/ChaoticFayth
Summary: Not much tries to bother a solitary dragon in his wooded home. Except a bold gunslinger doing a favor for a friend.





	Five Sixteen: McHanzo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohhicas](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ohhicas).



> One of 9 drabbles for @ohhicas‘s birthday. More will be posted over the next month, all different ships and fandoms, so on AO3 they'll all have different entries. (Also warm-ups for the fic series I’ve been working on but that’s something else.) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEFT TITTY. (Partially inspired by @radio-silents‘s mercenary Hanzo design. I’d already had loner merc Hanzo in my head, but that look really sets a scene.)

Hands that haven’t been steady for years fidget across the fletching of a cocked arrow. 

Typically his safehouse sees nothing but the occasional glimpse of wildlife. At the biggest, an occasional deer. But the footsteps he can hear now are even, two heavy feet and definitely of the human variety. If it was another member of the family looking for him, they wouldn’t clip through the underbrush so loudly. And any employers wouldn’t come calling in person. He had channels for that, a hard-to-find digital connection that he maintained if only to keep his skills sharp and some cash in his name.

This has to be a bounty hunter.

A noise through it in the background while he meditated--not that it came easy to him. It was a late afternoon and he’d been contemplating an unopened bottle of sake instead of clearing his mind. His stores were getting low, spring grasses getting high around this cottage. The trickle of a nearby stream louder as of late, as there’d been plenty of rainfall this spring. Anyone else would consider this forest home a haven, but this Shimada had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Or, at least, it felt like it at times.

Instead of enjoying a warm afternoon, he was perched in a lofted window, shaded by the branches of a nearby tree, straining for any further sounds of footsteps. His sonic arrow would do little good in such a confined space, so he had to rely on his natural senses. The distant coo of a quail, a breeze through healthy trees, a slightly jingle of metal that accompanies a foot-fall--Hanzo wastes no time in letting his arrow fly toward the noise. No line of sight through the trees, but his ears are as good as they ever were. Already he reaches for another arrow as the sound of another human being reaches him. A groan, muffled cursing in what sounds to be English, though he can’t tell from the distance and the rustle of spring. 

The archer slips from his windowed perch and through the tree that had sheltered him. Branch to branch until he’s caught sight of his quarry. A wide-brimmed hat knocked to the ground, black cloak around broad shoulders, a few glints of metal--albeit one from a holstered gun, but it existed nonetheless. It seems Hanzo’s first arrow had hit just glancing off the intruder’s breastplate and sunk into flesh below collarbone, placed just as well as it could to immobilize the man’s right shoulder. Looks like that revolver won’t do him much good for the time being.

A right shoulder marked by a logo in black, red, and the white of a skull--Hanzo flexes his hands in frustration before swinging down from the tree. The momentum of his fall lets him crush his bow into the man’s chest and pin him to the trunk of the tree before he’d even know he’d been hit. There’s no sneaking up on a dragon in his own territory.

“Goddamn, you greet all your guests like this?” The gunslinger hisses out, his hands automatically trying to brace against the Storm Bow so he can at least breathe. Not that it’d be easy, considering the arrow in the crook of his shoulder and the blood that seeps down over the straps of his breastplate.

“Only trespassers.” At a closer inspection, Hanzo vaguely recognizes this face from an occasional news report. Definitely a legitimate member of Blackwatch, and not one pretending to be in such a dangerous profession. Probably not a bounty hunter, then. “This is not the first time one of your people has come looking for me.” His English is rusty, but fluent. After all, it’s not like he speaks much of any language lately. 

The agent struggles weakly against the bow on his chest for a moment, though his right arm has almost no strength to it. He groans, ends up just keeping a hold of the bow at this point and not much else. “I ain’t comin’ to knock you off, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.” A sigh and he lets his head tilt against the tree behind him. 

Are the trees always so blurry around here?

“Been sent t’ make sure nothin’s happened t’ you. Got some intel that Talon might’ve gotten their hands on the last Shimada, and that ain’t somethin’ my crew would be lookin’ forward to.” The gunslinger blinks, slow, and when he opens his eyes again, he can see less of foliage and more trickles of light than anything else. That arrow went deeper than he’d thought, must have nicked something.

Hanzo expels air in what almost sounds like a laugh. Talon managing to coerce him? A once-mighty dragon could not stoop so low. But, the American’s words do have a note of truth through such a ridiculous accent. The thought of removing the bow from the newcomer’s chest is trickling into his mind when he notices the man’s hand slip from the weapon to dangle loosely at his side. It’s the only warning Hanzo gets before he’s supporting all of the man’s weight on his own. 

It wouldn’t do well for his isolation if he lets a member of Overwatch bleed to death in his front yard, now would it?

\--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Jesse wakes to the smell of wood fire and the sound of a tea kettle some time later. Not to mention pain from his shoulder. What starts out as a chuckle turns into an irritated laugh and just as he's tempted to abandon his urge to sit up, someone presses a hand behind his good shoulder and helps to lift him the rest of the way. Gathers his left hand up to hold onto a warm cup of tea. 

“Drink this.”

It takes the gunslinger a moment to focus his eyes. One long blink, two, he scrunches his face up and opens his eyes a third time and gets a headache when his vision finally clears. The hand giving him tea has a familiar dragon head printed on its wrist. That’s right, he’s Shimada-hunting, isn’t he? 

“A guy has to take an arrow to the shoulder before he gets some hospitality? Shit must be rough all around.” Jesse finally takes the cup under his own strength, holding it in front of his mouth as he watches Hanzo move back towards the stove. Whatever he’s being made to drink smells awful, but doesn’t taste too bad, at least. Could use a bit of sugar, in his opinion. “Thanks, though.”

The archer doesn’t particularly reply. Jesse gets a grunt of acknowledgement as Hanzo moves about the kitchen--well, area. Left to his own devices, McCree manages to get a look at the forest house. One central room, the bed that he currently sits on in the corner. A kitchen set-up diagonal from it, full stove and sink and a skinny fridge. There’s a table with two chairs--one pushed completely in--below an open window and what he can see of the sky is a dark purple. Most of the walls are covered in things. Newspaper clippings, framed pictures, several bookshelves cluttered with books and other items. Jesse can see a door close by, open to a small bathroom, and a ladder by the front door that leads into a dark space above them--an attic of sorts, he guesses. 

Any thoughts of this place being just a safehouse go out that twilit window, as this looks and feels like a home. It must be where Hanzo has lived in all the years since he--gave up the blade, so to speak. They’d known for some time where this place was--in the middle of fucking nowhere forest, and Jesse had to get directions twice from locals before he found the dirt path leading to this cabin--but after their first attempts to convince him to join Overwatch failed, the organization had just put a plainclothes in the local village and left things as-is. 

And it was the plain-clothes who had alerted them to Talon in the area.

Normally, Jesse wouldn’t go on a mission as low-profile as this, but a small dragon covered in cold metal and angry scars had appealed to his softer side. Not that it’d taken much convincing. Someone’s going to owe him something extra after this, though. Considering the arrow that he’d taken to the shoulder.

Speaking of, Jesse glances down. Armor and shirt are now missing, and his wound had been wrapped rather skillfully if he had to admit it. It still hurts like hell, but he won’t be bleeding out any time soon. Which is preferable, of course. Something from Hanzo’s direction begins to smell like soup by the time the elder Shimada speaks.

“They did make an attempt,” he says softly, stirring at something on the stove.

It takes Jesse a moment to realize that they were suddenly continuing their conversation from earlier. A surprise, but he was curious, after all. “Y’dont say.” He continues to sip at the drink he’s been given, and the more he does, the less he dislikes it. Which must be saying something.

Another noise from Hanzo, nonverbal communication must be an inherited trait, Jesse notes. “Two agents. They would not take no for an answer.”

There’s about a minute of silence before Jesse realizes that Hanzo is not going to provide details without being prompted. The stove clicks off, and the archer is heading toward the bed with two bowls of--something. McCree’s aching brain supplies “ramen” as the bowl’s contents come into view. One bowl is passed to him, the other Hanzo keeps as he sits on the edge of the bed with his trespasser. 

“What answer did they take?” McCree has traded strange tea for familiar ramen and picks at it slowly. His right hand still doesn’t have as much control to it as he’d like, but it’s something. Hanzo replies without even looking at him.

“Their lives.” As to if Hanzo means he let them keep them in exchange for leaving, or took them to make an example to the rest of Talon, the gunslinger can only guess. In fact, he’s not sure he wants to know, at this point, since Hanzo could’ve done the same to him while he was passed out. After all, this is a guy who, for all intents and purposes, killed his own brother in cold blood. Killing a stranger who threatens him would be a simple action.

The two of them sit in silence as they eat. An occasional sound of forest from beyond cottage walls, a soft couple of ticks of the stove as it cools down. McCree feels less like death, he notes, but still downwind from a pasture by the time he finishes his bowl. He prods at a floating bit of onion in the broth for a moment.

“Is the trek down to the village safe in the dark?” Jesse hadn’t seen any lights on the way up, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Not that he particularly wanted to stumble around in an unfamiliar forest at night with a chest wound. 

“No.” A simple answer as Hanzo takes both of their bowls back to the kitchen, emptying any remaining broth before he stacks them up to wash later. “Not unless you know the area.”

“Oh, yeah, just have t’ follow the map I made on the way up.” McCree snorts and it hurts a little. It hurts a little less when the Shimada echoes him with a similar noise. He might have a hole in his shoulder, but at least he still has his humor.

“You are going nowhere tonight, Agent McCree.” The archer states as he crosses his arms, brows lifted slightly. “I may actively dislike Talon, but Overwatch has--my respect, at least.” 

So, he’d done more than make dinner and wrap a wound in the hours that his intruder had been passed out. It wouldn’t take much look into Blackwatch’s activities to find Jesse’s name, considering the profile of some of the missions he’d been on. Shouldn’t he already know not to underestimate a Shimada?

“Fair enough.” The gunslinger reaches up to prod fingertips gently at the bandaging on his shoulder--yeah, still hurts. Why’d he do that, again? At least it feels like, under the wrap, that Hanzo had stitched the puncture shut. That’ll make things easier for when he gets back to civilization. Though he suspects he’ll get one hell of an ear-full from Captain Amari, at the very least.

“One more thing.” In the time that McCree’s been checking out his shoulder, Hanzo has walked to his kitchen table and back. Holding now what looks to be a photograph, taken from a distance. The archer places it into his guest’s hand, and McCree finds he recognizes the face. “I’d appreciate not being watched.”

Right. A keen-eyed Shimada, at that.


End file.
